Opinion: 21st Century Dissidents

New America Foundation senior fellow Emily Parker on how dissidents from China to Cuba are using social media to further their cause. Photo credit: Getty Images.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

... I ... the ... welcome back to Opinion Journal why Mary Kissel ... the scene an explosion of pro democracy protests in recent years ... the social media contributed to those campaigns ... I've got New America Foundation Senior Fellow Emily Parker ... the author of the new book now I knew who my comrades are joining me now and we ... he's been everywhere from Cuba to China Russia ... I just need to use social media isn't ... a tool to just talk to each other to organize protests ... any use it ... well and they are using it to radically transform the country's right to take China for example ... China is a country where you Internet heat the canola the Chinese government can no longer complete control the flow of information may seem have medicines who are right in cooed to impede sensors and ... get out the truth that the Chinese government wants to hide ... they are organizing on line protester signing petitions are demanding accountability and transparency and a response from the government and that demand more information on the government's have no choice but to respond to that sounds very powerful beyond the book I did get the sense that you thought ... that China's next the user the people in Cuba Iran or Russia ... where we're ready to sit to overthrow the governments of Suthep powerful yet said ... that's interesting question is to answer the question the first is that the line between stability and revolutions sometimes reserve and bright so these authoritarian governments that look all powerful ... biblical powerful until one day they're caught right and we saw this in Egypt and Tunisia the social media revolutions appeared to happen overnight given watching carefully Egypt for example ... these medicines were building up the skills and they were overcoming the psychological barriers ... to revolution on my right so ... I think in one shot the thing to remember is that ... the internet does not cause revolution something else causes revolution maybe it's an economic crisis maybe it's a political crisis but thanks to their on line networking skills and the fact that people know now that they are not alone when the revolutionary moment arises ... there ready till it's hard to predict as many as one unit of the book we talked about ... putting blue bucket some tough cars to make fun of police in Russian would of thought that was gone viral ... the nasty personal question that ... in one of the section to talk about being in Cuba ... he is trying to meet with these dissonance ... and was a feeling he had there was a lie to you ... I'm the and join them to to sort of need to communicate as they communicate ... was terrified ... he was a terrifying place to get the same and partly because one of the things you hear over and over again in Cuba is you never know who'll listen that there is an extensive network of service and informers and it means that ... the neighbor of the cafe owner anybody can be an informer and that creates an extensive system of paranoia when you're constantly watching what you say and are costly careful about who you say to Ansell I myself felt influenced by this I was very paranoid and scared in Cuba partly because ... of spending a lot of time people under surveillance the thirty seconds left ... in two wheel why U S companies like Google Ineos to censoring themselves in places like China is a benefit and to be there ... then and the pullout ... um I think it is better for U S companies to be in China but it not I mean we're working towards ... um world in which they do not have to censor themselves I think the way to do that is for all these companies collectively to take a stand against censorship ok New America Foundation daughter Emily Parker thing so much thank you for joining us